


Mother Knows Best

by anotherdirtycomputer



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Aphrodite - Freeform, Cabin 10 - Freeform, F/F, Femslash, Gen, Trans Female Character, good mom aphrodite - Freeform, love these lesbian moms, mama tanaka - Freeform, pjo oc - Freeform, pjo parent oc - Freeform, trans drew tanaka - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 05:22:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherdirtycomputer/pseuds/anotherdirtycomputer
Summary: Drew has two mommies and they both love her to the end of the Earth.





	Mother Knows Best

**Author's Note:**

> based on a prompt, once more, on my pjo sideblog, demiboypercyjackson! someone was upset by someone using aphrodite for their nasty terf reasons, so here's a kind reminder that aphrodite loves all her trans daughters. she's the goddess of beauty, all trans women are inherently beautiful... it's just math. ive fixed it up from the original post to make it more of a fic. if it interests people, i may write more! i'd certainly like to, drew is an interesting character.

Drew Tanaka knew she was trans from basically birth. She was born, heard the doctor say “congratulations, it’s a boy!” and smacked the midwife over the-

Just kidding. But, really, from a very young age, she knew she was a girl. And everyone knows how Drew Tanaka is - she is a fiery girl, sure of herself and confident in her abilities to a fault. She doesn’t take no for an answer and she _does not_  like being told she’s wrong. Her mama (not Aphrodite, her mother, but her _mama_ , the woman Aphrodite loved) has only a few moments to react when Drew tells her those matter-of-fact words, "I'm a girl." She nods, walks away, and for the first time in the six years since Drew was born, she prays to Aphrodite, who she loved and who loved her. She asks Aphrodite what she can do to help her daughter. Aphrodite shows up in gorgeous rays of pink light and with a fragrant perfume of sea salt and roses. Quietly, she says “just watch as I do,” and walks over to Drew. 

“Hey pretty girl!” Aphrodite greets her. “Do you know me?”

And Drew pauses from scratching her nose for a few seconds to look at the goddess Aphrodite. “You’re my mom, duh.”

Aphrodite laughs, a musical sound. “I sure am. I don’t often get the time to check up on my babies, but I wanted to see how my little girl was doing.”

“I’m okay, I guess.” Drew shrugs. “I’m playing trucks, which is alright. People don’t know this, but the red one goes way faster.”

“I’ll bet it does. Red is one of my favorite colors.”

Drew brightens up a little, pushes her short, straight hair out of her eyes to look up at her mother. “It’s mine too! I guess that’s why you’re my mom.”

When Drew turns away to grab more of her toys to show her mother, Aphrodite turns to Mama Tanaka and gestures. ‘Just like that,’ she mouths. And Mama Tanaka understands.

-

This continues for some time, Mama not understanding exactly what Drew needs. It took her a long, long time just to accept that she herself enjoyed the ‘company’ of other women - this trans stuff is much harder to get used to. It's an entirely different side to the community she was afraid to count herself a part of for so long... It terrifies her and confuses her and honestly, it frustrates her. Not for a moment does she ever make that Drew’s problem. When Drew doesn’t want to change her name (”What do you mean? Drew is a girl’s name because I’m a girl. Do you think it’s a boy’s name?” “Of course not, pumpkin.”), when Drew wants her nails painted a different color every nail, when Drew wants her hair done up in pigtails even though it’s still too short…. Mama never makes it Drew’s problem. She and Drew work together to find a solution, and Mama works to understand Drew. Because that's what mothers are meant to do.

When Drew comes home from school talking about a ‘pretty girl I’m gonna marry one day’, Mama isn’t sure what to think. This should be one of the easier ones, since it’s something she’s quite used to feeling too, but she wishes she could call on Aphrodite every time something happened. Parenting was hard. She never, ever wanted to hurt Drew. So she calls on Aphrodite through the ways she knows how; memory.

Like Aphrodite did so long ago, Mama takes it in stride, smiles reassuringly. “Is that so? Is she very pretty?” (”The prettiest!”)

Mama does this every time something like this happens. Every time a kid at school says something cruel, or Drew gets another crush, or her daughter picks up a new interest, or anything at all, Mama smiles and pets her hair and encourages her. She doesn’t make a big deal out of things, doesn’t ask accusatory questions. She’s gentle like sea foam on sand, like a breeze that shakes the flame of a candle but does not blow it out. She becomes that which reminds her of the lover she once had, the lover that gave her her beloved daughter, her Drew. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are a writer's best friends!


End file.
